Shooting War: A New Model for the Graphic Novel

There are worse things in the world than coming in to find a shiny new graphic novel waiting for you on your desk on a Friday morning. Okay, it's only a preview, but still, the first chapter of Anthony...

There are worse things in the world than coming in to find a shiny new graphic novel waiting for you on your desk on a Friday morning. Okay, it's only a preview, but still, the first chapter of Anthony Lappe and and Dan Goldman's Shooting War should prove a nice way to help me get through this long weekend.

We don't usually get copies of comics 'round these parts, but we happened to have included Act-I-vate, the Web comics collective of which Goldman is a member, as one of out Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. Goldman's current series, Kelly, is certainly a large part of the reason why.

Shooting War was originally syndicated over at Smith Magazine. The series--an exploration of a dystopian near-future in which the Iraq War continues to rage, after nearly a decade--is a must-read for all Web comics fans.

Later this year, the book will be collected as a graphic novel from the folks at Grand Central Publishing. It's an interesting business model, and another example of how the Web comic has quickly become the heir apparent to the photocopied mini-comic (itself something of an off-shoot of 'zine culture). Make a big enough splash with your series on the Web, and the book companies will beat a path to your studio door.

Shooting War will be available in graphic novel form in November. In the meantime, check it out on the Web, where it all began.

Brian Heater has worked at a number of tech pubs, including Engadget, Laptop, and PCMag (where he served as Senior Editor). Most recently, he was as the Managing Editor of TechTimes.com. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Lucy.
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